Forget the Chocolates, Fellas

If the quickest way to a man's heart is through his stomach, then the straight path to a woman's left and right ventricles is surely through her feet. Just in time for Valentine's Day, Kanye's design collaboration with designer Marc Jacobs, who is at the helm of the house of Louis Vuitton, has been unveiled. A particularly generous BF can pre-order the monochromatic red sneaks (all men's sizes, so convert) at a recession-defying price point, available at LV stores in June. If these don't keep the keep the love on lockdown, don't know what will.

I Want Pastry!

If you've tuned into the rather disappointing 'The City,' then you've probably caught 'Daddy's Girls,' which directly follows the limp, Sex & the City-manquee. On 'Daddy's Girls,' sister act and rap scions Angela and Vanessa Simmons are NYC- (Saddle River, N.J.) transplants go Hollywood. Think of 'Three's Company' (yes, I'm a little too familiar with '80s sitcom lore), but with an all-girl pad, and instead of Mrs. Roper, clad in print-heavy caftans, dropping by, fashion-forward neighbor Alycia shows up to talk ex-boyfriends, make plans, and engage in general tomfoolery. Like most 'reality' shows on MTV, this show too, while refreshingly realistic, functions as product placement for whatever the girls are hawking - in this case, their nascent clothing line Pastry. After watching them do everything from hike to date in pieces from the range, I had the Bow Wow Wow's 'I Want Candy' re-mixing itself in my head: I Want Pastry! But incredibly, a cursory look at the Pastry section at retail turned up none of the toothache-inducing Tees featured on the show. Just a bunch of neon-hued castoffs covered in animal prints. Not a cupcake in sight.

January 20, 2009

In hip hop circles, we've had Nas and Kelis ... Jay-Z and Beyonce ...but black love never looked as good as it does on this pair.

Lip Service

I had just finished covering the Ralph Lauren show during Spring 2009 Fashion Week in New York, and was about to make a Dean & Deluca pitstop, when a pair of editors talked me into posing for Marie Claire magazine's Beauty Road Show feature. My take on 'What I Love About Me' appears in the February 2009 issue. It's bizarre to see your face immortalized in the back of the book, but seeing the page made me remember that September shoot. Although the 'photo shoot,' on a busy Soho street, lasted all of 10 minutes, it gave me new respect for what the real strutters do. Posing is challenging! As was taking direction from the very patient photographer. I won't lie: Conjuring early cycles of ANTM helped.

It Was All a Dream...

Who can't finish the lyrics to that couplet? (That's 'I used to read Word Up! magazine' for the rap uninitiated). The 'Ready to Die' album was one of those moments, not just in hip hop history, but in music history, when you felt sure you were living through something special; what it must have been like to be a teen, for instance, when Marvin dropped 'Here, My Dear,' or the Beatles released 'Abbey Road.' Of course, 'Ready to Die' was, in part, Biggie's biography, and that made it all the more resonant. But it also introduced him as an unlikely heartthrob: B.I.G. was a hulking teddy bear, shyt-talking, smart, clownish, aggressive, fiercely loyal, soft-spoken and bellicose all at once. So many of the qualities that have made me crush on Brooklyn's finest men for so long. Though flawed by a drug-dealing past in Bed-Stuy, B.I.G. found a way to make those exploits classic material. More than excited to see what the filmmakers serve up in 'Notorious.'

Wearable Obsessions: Coup d'etat Brooklyn

Che opted for a beret, Malcolm and Patrice Lumumba were instantly recognizable by their horn-rimmed glasses, and Toussaint, a self-educated slave who went boot to boot with Napoleon, was regal even in Haiti's tropical temps. But what would these visionaries have worn to the revolution in 2009? I'd venture that the clothing line Coup d'etat Brooklyn--which now includes mostly t-shirts and some cardigans but is poised to expand--would make up a fraction of the no-nonsense, yet effortlessly fashionable, wardrobe typically favored by men with big ideas. The 'Teach the Babies' shirt ($30.00) comes in a trio of colors, including a shade of purple for women. Because we lead movements, too!

Sweet 'Honey' on the Rack

Honey, the fashion and entertainment magazine started by editors Kierna Mayo and and Joicelyn Dingle in 1999, will resurface this spring on the Web as honeymag.com. For black and brown girls who had been sorely in need of a magazine to call their own, Honey was a much-needed editorial balm when it launched. If you were the kind of chick who identified as much with Lauryn Hill as you did with Foxy Brown, was as likely to hit a poetry reading as Hot 97's Summer Jam, as apt to be reading Proust as the autobiograpy of Assata Shakur, i.e., if you were dynamic, you probably picked up a copy of Honey in its first incarnation and felt as if you were gazing into a beautifully embellished mirror. The magazine was bought by Vanguarde Media, changed editors (and changed moods), and eventually folded. News of Honey's relaunch was preceded by word that Vibe Vixen will also have a second life soon in print and on-line. (Honey online will be under the editorship of Shanel Odum.) Here's hoping they recapture their former glory.

A Sobering Port

Three episodes into MTV's 'The City' and I can scarcely summon the enthusiasm I was feeling last December ahead of the scripted reality show's debut. A spinoff of 'The Hills' that is meant to follow Lauren Conrad's sidekick to New York as she embarks on the next stage of her fashion career, the episodes have been short on drama and even shorter on the kind of glossy-postcard-from-L.A. veneer that made watching 'The Hills' with the volume turned down so irresistible. But the careerist Whitney Port who toiled away in the Teen Vogue fashion closet before taking a post at power publicist Kelly Cutrone's People's Revolution is now ensconced at Diane von Furstenburg, where her questionable title (image coordinator? public relations assistant?) seems to mean she's responsible for tasks such as straightening tank tops on models during Fashion Week. Little work and lots of play, the viewers are supposed to believe, has afforded Whit the kind of paycheck that gets you a sprawling Gramercy apartment with floor-to-cieling views and dining out each night at the best restaurants that SoHo and the West Village have on offer. Which brings me to the show's title: Where are the city landmarks that would-be Carrie Bradshaws are so familiar with? How about a date with BF Jay Lyon on the steps of the Met or a trip to the Strand to stock up on vintage fashion tomes?